Nigel Lawson contradicts chancellor by calling for a break up of Eurozone

I am City A.M's deputy editor, having joined the newsroom in late 2010 as an economics reporter.

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Julian Harris

FORMER Tory chancellor Nigel Lawson has clashed with current Number 11 inhabitant George Osborne, by labelling plans to preserve the Eurozone as “mad”.

Osborne has encouraged the 17 member states of the Eurozone to push forward with plans for greater fiscal integration, yet his predecessor has slammed the idea.

“It was the Eurozone that caused this problem [of the euro crisis],” Lawson told Exaro news website. “The last thing you want is to preserve the Eurozone because you will have problems coming again and again.”

Lawson (right) has proposed a break-up of the single currency, “done in a carefully thought out and orderly way.”

Yet the former chancellor said that the euro could be kept for Germany and “a few northern European countries”, and added that monetary union “cannot work without political union.”

Last month the businessman Lord Wolfson offered a £250,000 reward for an economic plan for how countries can best quit the single currency area.